News & Views

Is Your Company Using Happiness To Drive Success?

In the traditional, profit-driven model of business, money does, by definition, equal happiness. But as the focus for many organizations expands beyond profits to include a host of other factors (e.g., their environmental and social impacts), a satisfied workforce becomes a more reliable indicator of organizational well-being, and an important means to achieving true triple-bottom-line success.

Employee happiness surveys have grown in popularity since the rise of such assessments on a larger scale; countries including Bhutan, France and the UK have adopted a “happiness index” as an alternative prosperity measure to GDP, using the findings to help inform future policy. Applying this methodology to business, more and more organizations - including companies such as Zappos and Nestlé Purina - are correlating employee well-being levels to productivity, which in turn informs profitability.